Brink at Eurogamer Expo

The Eurogamer Expo kicked of in London today, and it's Brink all round - unexpectedly. For the first time ever, Brink was unveiled to the public by Splash Damage's very own CEO, Paul Wedgwood. On a first-come first-served basis, a few lucky Londoners were able to gain a seat for the Brink developer session - one of whom, Peter C. a gaming journalist for TheSixthAxis.com. Unfortunately, media recording was strictly forbidden so there will not be any gameplay footage for us to see. However, Peter C summed up everything nicely to give us a good idea of what Brink feels like and how much it relates to RtCW and ET. There are several promising quotes from the article which follow in this newspost, including a nice little summary for each one.

The S.M.A.R.T button seems like a feature designed for the console version of the game, however it does bring some positive notes to the table. According to Peter C, "You keep full control of the character at all times...". So, for example, you can interupt whenever you want in the middle of the bot movement. If you want to suddenly reload when you are in S.M.A.R.T mode, you certainly can. If you aren't exactly sure what the S.M.A.R.T button is, continue reading or read this thread.

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You simply hold the S.M.A.R.T button (which doubles up as the sprint button) and run at any object you wish to get around. Your character will then vault over/slide under/run up the object and new routes, and more importantly, new tactics will be available to you.

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You keep full control of the character at all times so, the example given was, if your character runs at a high wall, he’ll push back off it. But instead of waiting for an animation to end before you can continue to play, as soon as your character’s right hand is free you can shoot and as soon as the left hand is free, you can reload. It’s a cool feature which could lead to some interesting gameplay and provides multiple routes and strategies in any given situation.

Just like RtCW and ET, there will be two sides where each side has their own missions/objectives and narrators (like "They have broken into the bank!" for the axis on Goldrush)

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He first mentioned that the entire game can be played from two separate perspectives, either from the Resistance side or the Security side. Playing as either side not only changes the look of your character (the Security for example have riot gear, whereas the Resistance have makeshift belts created from car tyres), it also gives you totally different mission objectives and separate narratives.

Again, just like in ET you earn XP for objectives and so on. Obviously this means nothing to the competitive community, but it's still nice to see the similarities between ET and Brink. However, unlike ET and more like CoD4, you can buy upgrades with the XP. It's likely some of these features will be disabled for competitive play.

However the best thing about Brink is that it encourages teamplay even more than in ET and RtCW. For example, you get XP just for covering team mates.

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You gain XP for doing pretty much anything in Brink, from killing enemies, to completing mission objectives, to healing squad mates. This XP not only counts towards your overall rank, but can be used as “credit” to buy new upgrades and attributes for your character. So basically, the better you play, the more cool stuff you can unlock

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A mission objectives wheel shows several mission objectives at a time, with an XP rating next to it. Some were simple, such as covering a team mate and offered a small amount of XP, whereas some were more complex, such as destroying a blockage so your team could move around it, but these offered more XP. The whole of Brink seems to be based around a risk versus reward system, where more involved objectives offer higher XP rewards.

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If Killzone 2 and Team Fortress 2 got together one night, had a few drinks and did something they both regretted in the morning, Brink would be the end result

Like all Splash Damage games, you can change your class. However, Brink is slightly different. There are checkpoints (like command posts) where you can change your class. It's not clear whether you can change your class on the go as in ET or RtCW.

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The gameplay was the strong point of the game however. Heading to a computer terminal, which act as checkpoints throughout the levels, you can change your class (the usual soldier, medic, scout etc) and your weapon loadout to suit your play style or to best fit the situation

And probably the most promising statement for Brink I've ever read - it won't be another FPS like CoD4. It's 100% teamplay. It's funny how Wolfenstein tried to change this, and yet a game that isn't even in the Wolfenstein series still sticks to the ET routes. Silly Endrant :) However, Brink is limited to 8v8, which is not a problem for the competitive community. Hopefully it will be unlimited for the PC version for public play.

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There are no “classic” multiplayer modes, like deathmatch or capture the flag, just the campaign mode, which can be played solo, or with up to 15 other people, 8 playing as the Security and 8 as the Resistance.

At finally, at least we know the game will not be dead before it's even launched (*cough* Modern Warfare 2 *cough*). There will be dedicated servers for the PC.

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On consoles, the game will be peer to peer hosted, complete with host migration, and the PC version will feature dedicated servers

I strongly encourage you read the full article over at TheSixthAxis.com for more information.